The experience of … entrepreneurs reflects an unfortunate reality: companies are set up to perform. They are not set up to produce. If they were more capable at producing, they would not have to worry about combating disruption from outside. They would already be skilled at redesigning, disrupting, and innovating from within.
As a rule, large organizations do a poor job of distinguishing between high-profile roles that require a top professional skilled at optimizing a known space (a performer) and roles that require one skilled at redefining or disrupting that space (a producer). If your company is performer-centric, all successful activity looks like performance, and all roles look like performers’ roles. You may be wasting your best producers in jobs better suited to performers.
Even if you recognize that you have a role that needs a new, innovative approach, how can you identify employees who have the producer abilities to handle it? Step one is to understand and recognize the five habits of mind that producers share.
Authors: John Sviokla, Mitch Cohen
Source: strategy+business
Subjects: Innovation, Management, Organizational Behavior
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